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Home News & Features Feature

Don’t feed the homeless!

SDCNN by SDCNN
November 6, 2015
in Feature, From the Cover, News, Top Story
7
Don’t feed the homeless!

( l to r) Homeless forum panelists Rick Gentry, San Diego Housing Commission; Police Sgt. Rex Cole; JD MacDonald, Uptown Community Service Center; Councilmember Todd Gloria; Cecily Thornton-Stearns, County of San Diego; moderator Sean Karafin, North Park Community Association vice president. (Photo by Preston Webb)

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By Ken Williams | Editor

How our compassion gets in the way of solutions

San Diegans, by and large, are a generous people who are genuinely concerned about helping the homeless. But advocates for solving homelessness in America’s Finest City have a seemingly shocking response to those of us who desire to feed and clothe the misfortunate people who are living on the streets.

“If they ask you for money, don’t give them any,” urges JD MacDonald, head of the Uptown Community Service Center, a mail and computer center for the homeless in North Park.

( l to r) Homeless forum panelists Rick Gentry, San Diego Housing Commission; Police Sgt. Rex Cole; JD MacDonald, Uptown Community Service Center; Councilmember Todd Gloria; Cecily Thornton-Stearns, County of San Diego; moderator Sean Karafin, North Park Community Association vice president. (Photo by Preston Webb)
(l to r) Homeless forum panelists Rick Gentry, San Diego Housing Commission; Police Sgt. Rex Cole; JD MacDonald, Uptown Community Service Center; Councilmember Todd Gloria; Cecily Thornton-Stearns, County of San Diego; moderator Sean Karafin, North Park Community Association vice president. (Photo by Preston Webb)

City Councilmember Todd Gloria — who represents the Uptown and Downtown areas where the homeless problem is very visible to residents and tourists alike — echoed that theme.

“Don’t give away your money or your food to the homeless,” Gloria said. “Instead, give your money to groups that are working with the homeless.”

More than 100 people packed the Mississippi Room at the historical Lafayette Hotel in North Park on Oct. 28 for a “Forum on Homelessness: A Collective Impact,” presented by the North Park Community Association and moderated by its vice president, Sean Karafin.

Forum speakers stressed that our compassion towards the homeless is often misdirected and can make the problem worse.

“When you enable panhandling,” Gloria said, “the money is unlikely to go to the right thing.” He said homeless people who are afflicted with alcohol or drug problems will more than likely use the money to feed their addiction, and therefore the compassionate donor becomes an enabler.

“Same goes for the food,” Gloria added. “There is a lot of food out there.” He said that feeding the homeless doesn’t solve the problem, it only enables it by making free meals widely available.

Gloria pointed out well-meaning groups that try to help the homeless, particularly churches, often collect food, clothes and toiletries for the homeless. He illustrated how their vans pull up where the homeless congregate Downtown, handing out their donations to the homeless and then departing, and how the homeless then leave a mess behind as trash and unwanted items are discarded on the street.

Homeless people sleeping in North Park Community Park get complaints. (Photo by Ken Williams)
Homeless people sleeping in North Park Community Park get complaints. (Photo by Ken Williams)

“Care, not cash,” Gloria emphasized. He and other forum speakers stressed support for the Alpha Project and Father Joe’s. Gloria also recommended donating money to the “red parking meters” [see bit.ly/1N9OgjT] Downtown that help fund the Housing First, San Diego program. He suggested North Park might also want to install some “red meters” to aid the cause.

The Housing First program [visit bit.ly/1JyGa2g], operated by the San Diego Housing Commission, was widely praised during the forum. Rick Gentry, head of the Housing Commission, explained that this homelessness action plan has been very effective by creating additional affordable housing with supportive services. Gentry said the goal is to get homeless people off the streets and connected to services that will help them reclaim their lives.

Sgt. Rex Cole, of the San Diego Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team, said the four officers assigned to HOT serve citywide, from the Otay Mesa neighborhood on the border with Mexico to Rancho Bernardo in North County.

“We offer the homeless help,” Sgt. Cole said. “But being homeless is not a crime. We will work with them, but they have to want our help.”

Sgt. Cole urged residents to call in any crimes committed by the homeless (911 for emergencies or 619-531-2000 for non-emergencies). He said residents who know of any homeless person who is seeking help should advise them to flag down any patrol car or call the non-emergency number.

Forum speakers lamented that there has been an uptick of 2.8 percent in homelessness this year, after a decline of 4 percent the previous year. The official 2015 count conducted by the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless indicates there are 8,742 homeless people scattered across sprawling San Diego County. Of that total, 4,156 homeless people are unsheltered.

San Diego’s homeless situation is not as dire as other cities across California. Gloria said the homeless population has spiked 12 percent in Los Angeles County and 5 percent in Orange County.

Gloria and Sgt. Cole said that North Park’s homeless problem is not as severe as in other areas of the city. Gloria identified three problem pockets: Downtown, the San Diego River basin, and the beach and bay communities that include Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach. He said those three areas each had about 1,000 homeless people living without shelter.

Assembly Speaker Toni G. Atkins, who spoke to the audience before the forum began, said there are 135,000 homeless people in California. “We’re the state with the largest homeless population,” she said. “San Diego has the fifth largest homeless population in the U.S.”

More than 100 people attended a forum on homelessness in North Park, including Toni G. Atkins (bottom left), Speaker of the Assembly. (Photo by Ken Williams)
More than 100 people attended a forum on homelessness in North Park, including Toni G. Atkins (bottom left), Speaker of the Assembly. (Photo by Ken Williams)

Gloria noted that San Diego doesn’t get its fair share of federal money to fight homelessness, because of an antiquated formula. But he said after meeting with San Diego officials, federal authorities have agreed to recalculate the formula, and thus San Diego should get more money in future years.

To read the Police Department’s prevention tips regarding the homeless, visit bit.ly/1DrM9os.

—Ken Williams is editor of Uptown News and Mission Valley News and can be reached at ken@sdcnn.com or at 619-961-1952. Follow him on Twitter at KenSanDiego, Instagram account at KenSD or Facebook at KenWilliamsSanDiego.

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Comments 7

  1. Alison Barker says:
    7 years ago

    A city on the east coast came up with a creative idea to help the homeless. They recycled parking meters, painted them bright yellow and placed them in parks etc where homeless congregate. Then people could put their change in them and the money gets funneled to the proper agencies which are dedicated to help curb the homeless problem. I thought it was really cool and convenient.

  2. Melodie says:
    7 years ago

    I think food is valuable – there were times in my life that without access to food my child and I would have gone hungry. That was working full-time….barely keeping a roof over my head. Thankfully that is not my situation anymore – food however is always a good thing.

  3. Glenn T says:
    6 years ago

    Where is the research data to back up these arguments?

  4. Jennifer Dow says:
    2 years ago

    Not all homeless are like that. I been homeless almost 3 years not still trying to make it though. I don’t wanna be out here the money I get from panda handling goes for food and drinks. Where ever I go I clean up after myself. Just cause I’m homeless doesn’t mean I lost my molas or the way to live I still respect others and my self. I know peopl5judge all homeless to be one type but I’m not like those type.. I been looking all over for a way off the streets but every road I go down it’s been blocked I struggle everyday to get food and drinks and food for my husband and our dog but somehow we get though each day with a little. U cant or shouldn’t judge every homeless person cause some are not like all of them.

  5. Jeff says:
    2 years ago

    Hi Jennifer, Thank you for your comment. I agree that we shouldn’t judge others! I’m the new editor of Uptown News. If you ever want to explain what you are dealing with each day so people get a better understanding, please feel free to email me for an interview at kendra@sdnews.com.

  6. Louismwm says:
    2 months ago

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  7. Rickimr says:
    1 month ago

    How to Coronavirus Anxiety

    make-up hoarding. uncontrollable cleaning. researches bingeing. Sometimes panic can be as contagious as a virus. dr. Judson brewer, A neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Brown University, Is doing his part to help us manage coronavirus anxiety with valuable advice in his daily YouTube updates.

    Life Kit host Shereen Marisol Meraji spoken with Dr. Jud about what’s going on in the brain when we’re anxious, how to attract our “thought patterns brains” Back online and how not doing anything may well be helpful to those around us.

    doctor. Jud, every, contain me, should be saying, “breathe deeply” perhaps “I need to breathe deeply” Way more lately so much that I feel like it’s becoming a little bit clich. But you say this really works?

    absolutely yes, some of the ways our brain works. Fear is a normal adaptive impulse, But fear plus hardship makes our brains spin out in anxiety. And the best way to get our physiology calmed down and our thinking brain back online is literally to breathe deeply.

    If we can understand why fear is a helpful adaptive response, We can know how taking a deep breath can help. Fear helps us learn. for example, If we step out into the street and we almost get hit by a car, But step back just in time, Our fear response here reminds us to look both ways before crossing the street.

    we obtain revved up impatient] after the newer parts of our brain, The thinking and planning parts of mental performance, Don’t have accurate tips. as well as,while newer parts of brain as priligy] Start spinning out into these “can you imagine” trouble yourself loops. you will know, “What if this happens? What if that happens,

    If we can notice that we’re starting to spin out and take a step back and see that our brain is just waiting to hear about control where there’s uncertainty, We can try and get our musing about brain back online. We can try to literally calm our nerves down by taking a deep breath or feeling our feet as a way to ground ourselves in our direct experience.

    You’ve brought up how the prefrontal cortex in our brains needs very clear information. And we’re in a place right now where details are changing rapidly. So what’s going on in the prefrontal cortex while all of this is changing?

    How To Get Therapy When You Can’t leave the house

    sufficiently, Sometimes there isn’t a lot going on in the prefrontal cortex. Let’s say we’re afraid and anxious and maybe we go on social media to try to get much more information. we can actually catch something that’s even more contagious than a virus re able to catch] tension and fear. and anxiety and fear] is likely to, Which is simply the transmission of affect or emotion from one person to another. And really makes our prefrontal cortex shut down. You can charmdate review catch a virus from human being by being near them, But people can “sneeze” On your brain from anywhere in the world.

    We can also see this playing out will not on social media but when we, report, Go to the supermarket. If someone goes to the grocery store and sees some other person hoarding toilet paper, suddenly their scarcity brain kicks in. They may think, “Maybe I’m not going to have enough toilet paper, So they run to the toilet paper aisle and buy all other toilet paper, Even though they probably have enough at home. So when this scarcity mode kicks in, these can also spread panic and fear through social contagion.

    People are trying to control this case that we absolutely have no control over, precisely? I’m just cleaning everything that I can get my hands on and I’m never stopping, Which makes me feel like I have any kind of control over everything. Is it ever helpful to try and control things in the ways that we can?

    disposition Anxious? here’s a Quick Tool To Center Your Soul

    to tell the truth, it depends on what we’re doing. So if we’re afraid or panicked and we try to control things, we’re going to actually fall back into old habit patterns. for example, If our habit pattern is to clean out, We might start cleaning obsessively in a way that’s not helpful it could use up cleaning utility caddy. If we start cleaning our house and nobody’s been in the house for a week, The likelihood that something infectious will certainly suddenly show up on our countertops is pretty low.

    so now, If our brain is anxious and our planning brain is offline, The likelihood that we’re going to have any wisdom show up is pretty low. So as soon as again, It comes back to grounding ourselves and then asking ourselves, “What am I wanting to do? Is this virtually helpful,

    for example, In my psychiatry training course, I learned an excellent phrase, “Don’t just make a change sit there, the style is, If I’m sitting with a patient and they’re anxious, I could catch their anxiety over social contagion. web page, I become decided, And then I try to act to fix them to make myself feel better when, literally, the good thing that I could do is simply to listen. And I reckon that applies to all of us.

    All of this feels simple and fairly easy breathe deeply, Feel an individual, Take some time to just notice where you’re at and what are you doing around you in this very moment. But what exactly is make these into habits?

    ‘Tiny Habits’ Are The Key To behaviour Change

    is actually this phrase, “Short seconds, over and over, If somebody is going to make a habit of anything, They need short moments of repetition and they need to repeat it often and over. So it’s not just about trying to force ourselves not to check the news truly fails. you can not think your way out of a bad habit. But we can access the strongest parts of our brain, The reward based starting to learn parts, Which nourish themselves on reward. as an example, when we worry, We get more anxious. But if we can see that when we calm ourselves down maybe we hug a loved one or pet our dog or breathe deeply we feel less anxious, Then we can start to move our habits.

    How are you talking to people to make them feel happier about staying home? What are you telling people to make them feel empowered when they’re not allowed to go out?

    Two feelings I’m identifying here are guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling that we should do something when all the others is doing something. This then lead to shame about ourselves. So guilt is about a behavior and shame is about yourself. So i do believe, when more, one thing to do is recognize what you’re feeling. Are you perception guilt? Is that resulting to a shame spiral where you’re beating yourself up? this might make our thinking brain go offline. We tend to do things which aren’t helpful when we’re not thinking.

    If we can step out of that process, We can see that the best and most helpful right move is stay home. Because that’s what is going to stop the spread of this virus. Running out there and trying to do something could actually make this worse. If we can walk out of that shame spiral, Our thinking and creative brains come back online, And then we can think about what skills and talents we have that they can be handy.

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